RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of more than 1,500 people.

A grieving world has already recognised Lawrence Beesley as the chief recorder of the Titanic wreck. The sports master at an English public school, who was going West for a tennis tournament, he had no special qualifications for performing the task that fell to him alone out of nearly a thousand survivors but he brought to bare a splendid self-possession upon his observation of the whole sad story, and a turn for accurate observation... a memorable bookThe Loss of the ...

One hundred and twenty-five years of steamboating in Muskoka come alive with the anniversary celebration of the RMS Segwun.The Royal Mail Ship Segwun is the oldest operating steamship in North America, a Muskoka icon, and one of Ontario’s best-known tourist attractions. Built as a paddlewheeler in 1887, the RMS Segwun saw her initial career suspended in the 1950s when the ship ceased operations. Fortunately, she began a new chapter in 197...

This illustrated and colourful history charts the hey-day of the great liners, those grand and lavish vessels that cruised around the world carrying their glamorous passengers from port to port. Decorated to the highest of finishes, fitted out in the most luxurious of styles, these floating palaces epitomised their opulent age. Their iconic names, from Titanic to Mauretania, from Queen Elizabeth to QE2, conjure up visions of power, grace, elegance and nostalgia for this golden age of trave...

The Alligator was an amphibious machine designed and patented in Canada in the late 1880s. This warping tug was capable of towing al og boomk across a lake and then portaging itself to the next body of water. Steam-powered and rugged, it was one of the pioneers in the mechanization of the forest industry and for more than thirty years was ubiquitous in northern Ontario until eclipsed by its worthy successor the Russel tug. This long-overdue book on the Alligator Warping Tug, designed and b...

For decades Canada Steamship Lines proclaimed itself as the world's largest transportation company operating on inland waters. Its passenger and freight vessels could be found on the Great Lakes as far west as Duluth, Minnesota, and as far east as the Lower St. Lawrence River.The passenger steamers were known collectively as the Great White Fleet. These ships — from day-excursion vessels to well-appointed cruise ships — had rich histories. The sheer scope of these passenger service...

On Thursday, November 6, the Detroit News forecasted “moderate to brisk” winds for the Great Lakes. On Friday, the Port Huron Times-Herald predicted a “moderately severe” storm. Hourly the warnings became more and more dire. Weather forecasting was in its infancy, however, and radio communication was not much better; by the time it became clear that a freshwater hurricane of epic proportions was developing, the storm was well on its way to becoming the deadliest in Great ...

From the 1890s, the German shipping lines had begun to build the fastest and most luxurious liners. It had started when Kaiser Wilhelm had visited Spithead and been transported on White Star Line's Teutonic and had mentioned that Germany must have ships like this. The first four stacker, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, had been named in his honour and the ships that followed were faster and more magnificent than the last. Introducing the Ritz Carlton restaurants aboard ship as well as other...

The sinking of the Canadian Pacific steamship Princess Sophia was Alaska’s worst maritime disaster — until it nearly happened again.In 1918, the Canadian Pacific steamship Princess Sophia left Skagway, Alaska, on her last trip of the season to Vancouver. She never made it. Battered by a raging snowstorm and sent dangerously off course, she ran aground on Vanderbilt Reef, a rocky shoal in Lynn Canal, North America’s deepest and longest fjord. She w...

For centuries, ships' commanders kept journals that recorded their missions. These included voyages of discovery to unknown lands, engagements in war and sea and general trade. Many of their logs, diaries and letters were lodged at The National Archives and give a vivid picture of the situations that they encountered.Entries range from Captain James Cook's notes of his discovery of the South Pacific and Australia, to logs of the great naval battles, such as Trafalgar and the Battle...

The trials and tribulations of a Canadian business titan during a fascinating period in 19th-century Quebec.A Mind at Sea is an intimate window into a vanished time when Canada was among the world’s great maritime countries. Between 1856 and 1877, Henry Fry was the Lloyd’s agent for the St. Lawrence River, east of Montreal. The harbour coves below his home in Quebec were crammed with immense rafts of cut wood, the river’s shoreline sprawled with yards where giant square-ri...

Gradually evolving from sailing frigates, the first modern cruiser is not easy to define, but this book starts with the earliest steam paddle warships, covers the evolution of screw-driven frigates, corvettes and sloops, and then the succeeding iron, composite and steel-hulled classes down to the last armoured cruisers.